by Jes Battis
“We’ll do our best. But a lot of wild and crazy things would like to see you dead, so don’t expect miracles.”
“We should get that printed on a business card,” Selena observed.
I shrugged. “At least it would be honest.”
19
My feet were dangling over the edge of the bed.
That was strange.
I rubbed my eyes. Light was filtering through a small window, getting in through the cracks that were visible in the cheap yellow roll-down blind. The pillow beneath my head was soft, but also seemed a tad small, like the bed itself. I groaned. I’d been having the strangest dream about berries and small demons that could spit green froth clear across the room. My stomach rumbled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. I felt emptied out and exhausted.
I started to sit up slowly. Then, as my surroundings actually registered, shape by familiar shape, I stopped. I wasn’t in my room at home, although I was in a room that I’d seen many times before.
It was my childhood bedroom.
Everything was as I remembered it. The floor was old hardwood, rotting slightly at the edges. The window, I knew, would be a bitch to open, since layers of dried paint had long ago rendered it nearly immobile. There was a time when, after sliding it open inch by inch, I would have been able to crawl through and sit on the ledge with my feet hanging just above the ground. This provided convenient access to the backyard, where I staged most of my early duels with malcontents who’d invaded our garden.
I looked up. Sure enough, on top of my old redpainted bookshelf, there was a fish bowl. My unnamed goldfish swam inside, ignoring the colored stones that had settled at the base of the glass bowl. I’d never really warmed up to fish as a kid, partly because they smelled funny, but mostly owing to the fact that we always had cats. After holding more than one impromptu funeral service in the bathroom with my stepfather, I’d grown inured to the charms of anything without whiskers.
I pushed aside the Minnie Mouse quilt, which barely covered me anyway, and stood up. The sheets had that annihilated consistency of fabric that’s been washed too many times, slightly pilled now, but soft as a dream. My pillow, rather than smelling of hair spray or shampoo, had no scent at all.
I had to move carefully, since the room was packed with things. My bookshelf leaned sideways beneath the weight of its World Book collection, filled with colored illustrations of insects, machines, and distant star clusters. A copy of The Phantom Tollbooth lay dog-eared on the top shelf. I remembered reading it when I’d been confined to bed after getting the mumps. I’d itched and hurt and wanted to scream and scratch every inch of my body, until I was nothing but a shaking bloody mess, but for a few hours that book kept me distracted.
Toys were piled in the corners of the room without any sense of organization. Snake Mountain stood against the wall, its hinged mechanism allowing it to open like a volume made of hard purple plastic. I had broken the microphone years ago, or maybe it had never worked to begin with, but you could still place action figures within the bowels of the castle. You just had to be the voice of Skeletor yourself, or God, or whatever thing you wanted to be in that moment.
The figures themselves languished in a plastic bucket. He-Man was endlessly replicated in varieties to suit any medieval occasion: battle action, riding action, chest-plate action with realistic damage, and one that was simply denuded and lying at the very bottom, facedown. I couldn’t remember the precise scenarios I’d dreamt up for them all, but they usually involved deteriorating negotiations followed by disorganized combat. My mother never tried to buy me Barbie. She was wiser than that.
A few times, I think, Kevin suggested that I might want to play with more feminine toys, but I just stared at him, uncomprehending. He bought me a Rainbow Bright doll one Christmas, a Moondreamers doll the next, but they were immediately consigned to my closet. My Little Pony was okay in a pinch for cavalry scenes, but on the whole, I preferred actual knights.
There were a lot of questions I could have asked myself at this point.
Where was Ru?
Was this a dream? And, if so, how could it be so perfect?
Was I dead or dying or in some kind of perimortem state?
Maybe this really was the afterlife. I was barely eight years old when I’d lived in the bungalow on Young Street, in the town of Elder, with my mother and stepfather. From what I could remember, I’d been happy here. I guess settling here for eternity made about as much sense as settling anywhere else. At least there was a convenience store close by, the Honey Market, with an inexhaustible supply of Archie comics and Popsicles.
I stepped out of my bedroom and into the hallway.
The small bathroom was on my left, with its tricky toilet that always hissed. I peered inside. Sure enough, the counter was cluttered (although not in a messy way) with the tiny Spanish soaps and bath beads that my mother favored. I remembered being sick once and throwing up endlessly into that toilet, throwing up even water, even air, until everything in my stomach had left in a cold rush. Kevin sat with me on the couch. We watched the Ewok movie while my mom drove to the store to buy more ginger ale.
There was a mirror on the wall, which reflected the master bedroom. I’d seen them in bed together once, very late at night, when I was walking to the kitchen to get a glass of water. They were naked and seemed to be sliding around on the bed with each other, as if in a perfectly frictionless environment. They were both giggling.
My mother saw me in the mirror, even though it was dark and I stood very still. Later, she asked me what I’d seen. I said nothing, which was true at the time. I had seen nothing. It had registered as nothing, or rather, as a mystery that the mirror itself offered to me without any explanation.
The mirror reflected an empty bedroom now. The bed was in the center, its maroon quilt and matching sheets arranged neatly. An old poster of Robert Plant, from his days immediately after Led Zeppelin, was tacked to the left wall. On the right was a framed picture of a 1969 cherry red Mustang with black detailing. Most people thought it was Kevin’s contribution to the room’s decor, but both the poster and the framed print belonged to my mother. Her dream car and her dream man.
To the left was her dresser, and atop it her jewelry box. I could tell you its contents without even looking: oversized fluorescent hoop earrings, smaller silver hoops, cat brooches with emerald eyes, nothing gold on account of her allergy to the metal. She let me wear the clip-on earrings, but I had to wait until I was a teenager to borrow the real ones with their hooks that always pinched.
Under the bed, I knew, was a collection of lost metal and plastic backings, which the cat had secreted away for her own nocturnal amusements. This would have been before we had Misha, the amiable gray tabby who would stay in our lives for almost twenty years. In the old house on Young Street, we shared space with Tempest, a pampered Siamese cross who was my constant companion during archaeological expeditions in the living room. When I needed to exchange a sack full of sand for some guarded treasure, I would use Tempest instead, placing her carefully on the table and instructing her not to move. She would stay put for a while, examining her slim paws. Then she would eventually hop down and disappear into the kitchen, reasoning that her cooperation deserved a reward.
I heard a sound coming from nearby.
Slowly, I passed through the archway that led to the main room. It hadn’t changed. The old black couch with no springs was pushed against the far wall. Beside it stood a table topped with yellow ceramic tiles, which my mother had rescued from one garage sale or another. A pack of her cigarettes, Matinée Slims, lay on the table, the plastic balled up and discarded next to them. My mother hadn’t smoked in twenty-two years, but I could still smell her chosen cigarettes, still hear the sound of her unwrapping the gold foil that protected them.
An entertainment center dominated the far wall. Since it was still the late eighties, it consisted of twin tape decks and a JC Sound turntable, along with stacks of vinyl shelv
ed neatly below. I could remember dancing with her, my feet on top of hers, my arms clasped tightly around her waist. We danced to Blondie’s “One Way or Another,” and “Cupid,” and “Twistin’ the Night Away.” Every time she dipped me, I would laugh and laugh, like a little maniac. So she’d dip me again, until it seemed as if I was about to touch the floor, as if I’d surely fall, but I never did. She always held on to me, and she was stronger than she looked.
I heard the noise again. A kind of shuffling. After the incident with the pager, I was wary, but also annoyed with myself for suspecting everything. I peered around the edge of the couch, thinking it might be the familiar noise of the baseboard heater finally kicking in, tapping and burbling to itself.
A cat looked up at me.
She sat on the floor calmly. Her eyes were electric blue, and she had a long, thin tail that crooked into a question mark as she regarded me.
“Tempest?”
She leapt onto the arm of the couch, purring. She butted her head against my hand, and I rubbed her. For a while, that was all I could do. Just stand there, breathing, while she purred, our reciprocal noises already familiar to each other.
I hadn’t seen her since I was eight. She’d been hit by a car one day while I was at school. My mother told me that she ran away, but I knew better. I never dreamt that I’d be able to touch her again. But she was here, and very real. She opened her delicate pink mouth and yawned.
Then she leapt off the couch. She looked at me for a few seconds, as if gauging my intelligence. I returned her gaze.
“Are we playing?” I asked her. “Is this a game?”
Tempest looked disappointed. I wondered if I’d completely misjudged the situation. Then she turned and padded slowly into the kitchen.
I followed her. She jumped onto the old Formica table, which was pushed against the window overlooking our backyard. The window was open, and a glass mobile stirred within its frame. The hummingbirds jangled against one another, even though I couldn’t feel a wind coming from outside. I couldn’t smell anything, either.
I didn’t have to open any of the cupboards to see how they were arranged. I remembered the placement of every spoon. I remembered when I was even younger, and I’d transformed the kitchen into an apothecary, brewing potions solely for my mother’s delectation. She would comment on how wonderful each one looked, especially if I’d added food coloring. Then, when my back was turned, she would dump it down the sink. She always scrubbed the stainless steel afterward, to eradicate any trace of colored liquid that might suggest her betrayal.
Tempest looked at me once more. Then she walked down the short flight of steps that led to the laundry room. It was less of a room, really, and more of a clumsy add-on, probably from the 1970s, with unfinished concrete floors covered in a thick layer of ropey gray paint. I used to pretend that it was pahoihoi lava, a particular kind that I’d read about in one of my World Book volumes. I’d also read about pillow lava, the result of pyroclastic eruptions, which I’d assumed was an actual pillow for fire-sprites and other incendiary elementals. Back when I still tacitly believed in such things, but had never come across one. That didn’t happen until puberty.
The cat gave me another look. Then she walked over to the back door and sat down in front of it.
“You want me to go outside, eh? You’re quite the tour guide.”
She said nothing.
“All right. We might as well check out the yard while we’re here. Who knows if I’ll ever have the chance to visit this dimension again?”
Of course, I didn’t know whether or not it was a parallel dimension, or some splinter of an afterlife, or a fever dream, or the last eclectic firing of my neurons as my brain slowly died from lack of oxygen. It could have been all or none of these things. It could have been a trap set by Basuram, Arcadia, or anyone.
My pockets were empty, and I had no purse. I didn’t even have an athame. I had no idea if materia worked in this twilight place, and I wasn’t quite ready to try it out yet. Aside from my lackluster training in jujitsu, I was pretty much humped if a demon came calling. Or worse.
I opened the door and walked into our backyard. There was a small square of concrete, on which sat a picnic table with rusty iron bolts just barely holding the pieces together. A child’s delight. Beyond the concrete was a slightly larger square of yard, bordered by a low, mostly ornamental fence separating our house from the others on this quiet block. I walked along the perimeter of our garden, which had always mostly been stinkweed and rhubarb. Still, I can remember holding my plastic sword among the purple rhubarb, staring up at the roof of the house and wondering: What sort of levitation spell might get me up there? And what benevolent sorceress might I procure it from?
Back then, I thought a lot about magic. And I hadn’t even begun to radiate power yet. It wasn’t until I hit twelve that I really started leaking materia all over the place, like a radiator with its cap off, just oozing its contents slowly onto your driveway.
I looked down. Tempest was at my feet, looking up at me. Her paws seemed slightly offended by the prickly grass.
“Let’s keep walking,” I said. “See if there’s anyone else in my coma dream. Maybe we’ll run into my second-grade teacher, Miss McGrath, and I can tell her what I really thought about her ceramic penguin collection.”
There was a hedge that ran the length of Young Street, and I touched it as we walked. It felt as I remembered, although it had seemed larger, far more uncanny, when I was a child. I had imagined that it hid orcs and spies, as well as those unsettling mice from the Mrs. Brisby movie.
The Honey Market was at the corner of the street and just past Central Elementary, which I could hear from my house. It was weird. Seeing my old house was disturbing, but seeing the old market seemed almost worse. It was one of the first real other places I remember as a kid. You’ve got your room (semiprivate), the yard (public), and then maybe you’ve got the park (surveilled). The corner store was the first place I remember actually being myself, and where I first began to really be aware of myself as a consciousness separate from others. I could read Archie and Silver Surfer comics for hours, and if I spent too long, they’d get a call from my mother: Sorry; is she reading all your magazines again?
“Let’s go.”
Tempest walked in before me, as if to lessen the blow. I was grateful.
The store, like the street outside, was empty. Maybe the city was empty. If this experience was just my own private neural collapse, then I hoped my subconscious would at least have the decency to let me run into another person. Not that the cat wasn’t fine company, but she wasn’t wearing a golden collar and didn’t seem to have Latyrix’s gift of speech. Unless she suddenly developed a very interesting hobby, I knew I was going to be feeling every moment of this eternity.
I walked in. The floor was mismatched linoleum, mostly red and black, but with one inexplicable blue patch where the freezers stood. There was no one behind the counter, although I could see from its light that the cash register was turned on.
The magazine rack was stocked with copies of Thor, X-Factor, and Elektra. In a battle between Thor and any other superhero, save for the Silver Surfer, I felt that Thor was always going to win. He had a hammer, named Mjolnir, and it could pretty much break Odin’s jaw. What were the New Warriors going to do against something like that? You think Speedball’s going to use his fun kinetic energy to bounce all around Thor, in the hopes of confusing him? This is an Asgardian. Not even Speedball is bouncing back from an open skull fracture.
Tess.
I looked sharply at Tempest. “Did you just say something?”
She didn’t answer. The voice hadn’t seemed to be coming from her to begin with. I peered around the corner of the shelves, but all I could see were endless rows of Pop-Tarts and Hamburger Helper.
Tess.
It was coming from the direction of the magazine rack. I stared at the comics, the sci-fi magazines, and the neat, colored block of Archie digests.
>
“Maybe one of these things is a weapon,” I said to the cat. “It could look like anything. It could be a plug, or a calculator. Is it wrong that I kind of hope it’s an ice-cream sandwich?”
Tess.
I blinked. Was the voice actually coming from the ice-cream freezer?
It was right next to the comics. I peered in at all the sleeping Revello bars, the lime Creamsicles, and the coveted Drumstick cones. I couldn’t hear the voice anymore. I placed my hand on the sliding door. It was slightly warm.
“Maybe this is how I’m going out. A conversation with ice cream.”
I slid open the door. The cold air touched my fingertips, and I could smell something sharply metallic inside.
Tess.
Was I really going to put my head inside a freezer?
I didn’t feel quite ready to be the fatal girl in the movie, at least not yet. I kept both my hands planted firmly on the freezer door, but I leaned in slightly.
“Hello?” I asked finally.
Jesus. It’s about time. I’ve been yelling your name for twenty minutes.
I blinked. “Derrick?”
Hi.
“Do you want me to try to broadcast my thoughts to you, instead of just talking out loud?”
Have I ever once asked you to do that?
“No.”
Are you a trained telepath?
“Well, obviously not. But, I mean, I’ve done focus exercises—”
Don’t try to think-talk with me. It’ll just get messy. I know it’s weird, but you just have to keep talking to yourself.
“I can always just talk to the cat.”
There’s a cat with you?
“Yeah. My parents’ old cat, Tempest. She’s the only living thing I’ve run into here. Elder is completely empty.”
You’re in Elder? And there’s a cat with you? That’s so weird.
“I know, right?” I looked once more at the freezer. “Is your psychic presence anchored to the ice-cream freezer, or can I close this?”
